Rubbing his hands, Claud attempted to calm the impulsiveness within him. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but two hours into the wait, a burgeoning urge to head out and fight had gripped him tightly. Even after using Cleanse once, he couldn’t extricate himself from such an urge, as if there was a fated enemy or something he had to kill.

Where was it coming from?

Rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, Claud made an excuse and returned to his room, before pulling out Crown. The little fellow had been wobbling and quivering the moment the abnormality struck him, in what felt very much like worry to him.

“Meep!” Crown bounced off the bed and onto his arm, before clambering up into his hair. Claud could feel Crown trembling madly as it nuzzled him over and over again.

“What’s wrong?” Claud asked. “Is it that desire to fight in me that’s worrying you?”

Crown hopped on the spot once.

“Can’t you do something about it? I remember you snapped me out of some mental skill not too long ago,” said Claud. “After receiving that pearl or the roots, now that I think about it.”

Making a little sideways motion, Crown rolled back down onto his shoulder and sidled up to the crook of his neck. The velvety, cool texture on his neck was directly at odds with the desire to fight with whoever came along, a contrast that only served to heighten his sense of frustration. By all reasonable accounts, such an irrational desire shouldn’t exist within him, given his history and character.

Therefore, it had to be an external influence, but what kind of influence was it?

Letting out a little grunt of frustration, Claud buried himself under his blanket, with Crown cuddling close a moment later. The little guy had probably tried its best to dispel this abnormality within him, only to be stopped in its tracks.

“There, there. It’s not any fault of yours,” said Claud. “Besides, I didn’t pick you up because you could return me to a default state; I picked you up because you were adorable.”

He was fibbing about that bit, but unless the Coloured Gods came down to refute that personally, no one would ever reveal that little lie.

“Meep…”

“There, there.” Claud curled up underneath the blanket and tried to examine the foreign desires within him. It was evident that they didn’t belong to him…or to the person called Claud, at any rate. This was the second time that he had felt such an impulse; the first one was…

His thoughts stopped for a moment.

“Absolute One?” Claud murmured. “Is that the cause?”

He got up from the bed slowly, running through the memories of the day he took down the Tri-head Snake. The compulsion to strike and kill the monster was at the forefront of his mind, but above all, Claud had wanted to infuse the infinite mana Absolute One granted him into a skill of his.

The skill evolved shortly afterwards.

Now that he was looking back on it, Claud was fairly certain that the abnormal state he had been back then, as well as the one he was in now, had to do with his skill.

“Maybe it’s an urge to fight or something,” Claud said out loud. “Like a competition or something. Enemies, maybe?”

Crown bounced twice on his bed, and then scooted onto his thigh. Clearly, the little guy agreed, but even if they found the cause, Claud didn’t know how to deal with it. Absolute One was too powerful for him to let go off, and to begin with, the skill couldn’t actually be replaced by another. He had tried it, long ago, when he saw no point in having such an odd trump card, only to notice that he couldn’t replace the skill with another one.

He rolled around on his bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling. Claud didn’t dare to do anything that could potentially strengthen his irrational urges, which meant that the next best thing he could do was to pull out a book and plop Crown onto his chest or something.

Someone politely knocked on the door three minutes later, and Claud immediately placed the book down, before covering his body with a blanket.

“The door’s not locked,” said Claud. “Come in.”

Lily poked her head into his room a second later, her eyes looking around warily. “I don’t happen to be disturbing you, do I?’

“Disturbing me from?”

“Anything?” Lily asked. “Ahem. Well, Schwarz told me to be careful. Something about urges and desires.”

“Oh.” Claud nodded. He hadn’t kept it from the others, since they could help restrain him if he acted oddly or irrationally. “Yeah. I was troubled by my urge to go out there and fight.”

“Like, bloodlust?” Lily asked. “You? And fighting?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s a phase or something,” Claud replied. “And that’s why I’m lying down in the most comfortable place I can think of. I’m probably not going to view the battle or something, lest my impulses run wild and I head to a battlefield that’s too big for me.”

“Oh.” Lily approached the bed and sat down at the foot of it. “Well, at least you’re fine. I thought you were sick or something, since…”

“Nah, whatever happened yesterday had nothing to do with my current condition,” Claud replied. “Right, sorry for not being able to serve you drinks…but there is a barrel full of fizz over at the corner, though. There’s a set of cups and a ladle over at the cupboard in the opposite corner…no, not that cupboard. That’s the one with my clothes and artefacts. The other one.”

Lily thoughtfully prepared a cup for him, and after thanking her, Claud forced himself up and took a sip. To his surprise, the aggressive thoughts riling up his mind seemed to weaken from the lovely sweetness, and Claud took another sip from his cup.

“Huh.”

“Something wrong?” Lily asked.

“Something right, rather.” Claud licked his lips and downed the whole cup. “Somehow, I managed to weaken my bloodthirst or whatever you call it with this.”

“With fizz?”

“Yeah. With those fizzy drinks,” Claud replied, licking his lips. Filling his cup up once more, he downed the drinks and tried to track the moment in which the bloodthirst weakened. “Odd. It seems that drinking tasty things can help to curtail one’s aggressive impulses.”

“It’s good that you found a solution,” said Lily. “But those impulses that you’re troubled by…might they not be a sign of something?”

“A sign?”

Lily nodded. “When I learnt what my family…what they did, I found myself thinking about what to do all the time. It occupied most of my waking hours. Like you, the impulse to do something — anything — to stop my family from continuing their deeds consumed my minds. In part, my search for Tot and the Moon Lords was to stop myself from engaging in such a rash act.”

Claud reached out a hand and patted her shoulder. Lily had forced herself to bring up the topic of her family to tell him something. While he still did not know the reason, the fact that she had brought up one of her eternal regrets was something that touched him.

Lily smiled, an expression that told him that she understood his thoughts, and in that moment, the pieces fell together. She was trying to tell him that these impulses had to have a reason. Even if it was his skill trying to make him undertake certain actions, these actions had to have some logic.

Somehow, the two of them had gained an odd understanding of each other, but it was one that Claud would not trade for anything in the world.

“Thanks, Lily.” Claud took another sip of his cup. “For everything.”

“Happy to be of help.” Lily rubbed his head, before getting up. Claud tilted his head at that very maternal act, and then rapped the barrel lightly.

“Have another cup before you go, Lily,” Claud replied.

“I was waiting for you to make that offer,” Lily replied, a grin on her face.

The two laughed. Moments later, Lily ambled out of the room with a full cup, and silence fell once more as the door closed behind them.

“Meep?”

Crown rolled out from underneath the blanket, and then tilted in the direction of the door.

“She’s Lily,” Claud replied. “A…friend of mine. I guess?”

Crown returned to its usual pose.

“Meep!”

“Huh?” Claud narrowed his eyes. He didn’t quite understand the emotion behind that particular utterance earlier. The box paused, before its top popped up. Claps followed as it opened and closed itself in rapid succession, and an absurd notion crawled into Claud’s mind.

“Wait,” said Claud. “Don’t tell me you want to let her know of your existence. Please don’t, dear ancestor. You’re still very much in the public eye. If she knows about you, it wouldn’t be too hard for her to draw the link between me and Tot.”

The box wilted visibly, somehow, and Claud felt bad simply looking at Crown.

Rubbing his temples, Claud sighed and said, “If I find her really, absolutely and totally trustworthy, I’ll tell her about you. Okay? You’re with me all the time, so you can be the judge. Just don’t let her know about your capabilities, got it?”

The box perked up once more, and Claud sighed.

Just what was Crown thinking?